Tube Mania... Image Sprays and Nozzles Too!

“Image sprays are a way for you to 'paint' a repeating image, or series of images, onto your digital page.”

They're called Picture Tubes in Paint Shop Pro.  Micrografx Picture Publisher and Corel Photo-Paint also have them, but call them Image Sprays. In Painter, they're called Image Hose Nozzles. If you are a Photoshop user, you can add this functionality with a plug in called PhotoSpray. The latest version of Ulead's PhotoImpact has similar functionality with the Object Clone Tool.

A lot of people have discovered they can be fun to play around with and collect.  In this feature, I'd like to explain what they are, how to use them, and show you some practical uses for them. For the sake of simplicity, I will refer to them as image sprays throughout this article.

Basically, image sprays are a way for you to "paint" a repeating image, or series of images, onto your digital page. Yes, it is possible to achieve similar results using copy and paste repeatedly, but with image sprays there are several advantages. A series of images can be saved into one file that is readily accessible.  The image spray is loaded just as you would select a brush tool. With an image spray, rather than pasting an image and then moving it into place, you have more control over the initial placement since it works the same way you would handle a brush. Depending on the software you use, you also have controls for several options which may include opacity, feathering, sizing, and more. In all the programs mentioned above, you have the ability to create your own custom image spray files.

Jasc Software has information on working with Picture Tubes in Paint Shop Pro at The Tube. For Picture Publisher users, Micrografx offers tips & tricks on How to Create an Image Spray Collection. Graphics Unleashed offers an excellent tutorial on Using Image Sprays in Photo-Paint. If you use Painter, you'll find a good deal of Information on Using Nozzles from Garden Hose. If you use PhotoImpact 4.2 or higher, you can learn how to use the object clone tool like an image sprayer.

So, now that you've found the image sprays, what can you do with them? Image sprays can be useful any time you need to use repeating elements in your images.

Creating Web graphics is one task where using image sprays can be beneficial. Chances are, you will want to use a repeating element on the background, dividers, buttons, and banners you create for a Web page. If you save the repeating elements to use as an image spray, they will be easily scalable and readily available to apply to your images.

Another popular use for image sprays is in creating seamless tiled backgrounds. You simply fill your tile with a repeating image from the image sprayer, then offset the tile and paint on more images to hide the seams.

Because the tool works similar to a brush, you can constrain your strokes while painting to create borders and frames with the image sprayer tool. In Corel Photo-Paint, you can use the image sprayer to stroke a mask for creating perfect borders.

One of the more obvious uses for this tool is to embellish an image... put some butterflies in your garden, add landscaping to a picture of your home, even transform a barren desert into a lush, tropical scene. You can even paint images from scratch entirely using image sprays.

You can learn more about image sprays, or start downloading free image sprays right now with the following links:

• Free Stuff from Your Guide
• Paint Shop Pro Picture Tubes
• Picture Tube Information
• Photo-Paint Image Sprays
• Photo-Paint Image Spray Tutorials
• Painter Nozzles
• Ulead PhotoImpact Objects
• Picture Publisher Resources

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~ Sue Chastain
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